The President followed an outline he had posted in the BOD Forum regarding the responsibilities of all of the board positions and provided some additional color including discussing the transition from the last year's board.

Propagation Program

After a brief overview of the prior history of the prop program, a discussion was had as to what we wanted to accomplish by continuing the prop program. It was decided that our primary purpose continues to spread responsible and sustainable reef keeping ideology to both, our membership, sponsors and the general public. We also want to maintain an attractive variety of coral to bring to events for sales to showcase and promote Captive Propagated coral as well as provide revenue via raffle sales at swaps and raffles. We will accomplish this be keeping a log of information on each coral and showcasing said captive prop corals at events, swaps and raffles.

The propagation chairman work with the BOD to tap members that are willing and able to prop corals based on demonstrated success in growing and farming (such as success in DBTC) as well as create a reporting template for keeping track of information and status of the corals. Ideally, taking BAR prop corals back to what used to be known as LE corals (grown in multiple tanks over multiple generations, with similar coloring etc).

Individual threads will be created for each coral with as many as 10 corals in the active program and any given time. A general information template will be sent out monthly to proppers. In order to ensure we have good information about the corals, the prop chair will also work with other members of the club that will assist on an as needed basis with reports and pictures to take some of the burden off the proppers. Details of frags made of mother colonies will also be contained within the threads. Club funds will be earmarked on an as needed basis for the purchase of coral for the program and we will also solicit corals from members that are not common already among club members. Corals will be chosen for the program based on their uniqueness and will be retired once they have been saturated within the club.

DBTC
Problem: Why can't we give coral away?

Lack of visibility, getting buried off page one of new posts, fear of taking on debt, oversaturation of corals within the club, etc. .

Possible solutions:

Visibility to other clubs including out of town is a consideration. It was discussed that with so many DBTC frags now going unclaimed, we should consider opening up our distribution to other clubs. We would to spread our way of distributing captive bread coral to other clubs in the process and foster responsible reef keeping habits. In distributing corals to other potential clubs, first hit clubs where we have inside knowledge of members (perhaps transplanted BAR members, etc) that will take responsibility for distributing out corals to club members to ensure initial success. Lack of promotion when DBTC frags become available is also part of our problem.

Suggestion was made to highlight particular corals from DBTC each month to enhance spotlight and foster excitement so they don't get stale or lost in the clutter. DBTC theme/pics of the month on the home page.

Move old DBTC threads that do not contain a transaction out of their existing forums.

Prop Officer will recruit a committee to assist him on implementing some of the above ideas.

Coral show tank

Move forward on buying a tank setup as agreed upon at the July 2010 BOD meeting. Budget is $1000.00 to purchase the tank and set up. Thought exact specifications have not as yet been established, the Vice President suggested a size of approximately 36 x 18 x 8 and felt that it could be obtained (under budget) with a simple set up including TEK lighting and a skimmer. V.P. will discuss with Gen from Kritter regarding the build of a tank that will be ideal for shows (similar to those used by coral sellers) and can also be kept as a self contained and very portable unit. Just prior to an Event, the Traveling Tank would be stocked from the Propagation Farm tanks. The tank will be used only for such events in order to ensure it is readily available for said events. We will move forward ASAP to ensure that it is available well before BAYMAC in May of 2011.

Reef-A-Paloosa

V.P. gave report on in Southern Cal. The show had 1800 visitors on the first day. It's a huge venue for selling coral, equipment, services and reef keeping methods. Booths cost $800.00 each seller.

Speakers

V.P. discussed various possibilities for future speakers including Julian Sprung (who doesn't speak often), James Faveria, (clam expert), Christine Williams (Pathogens of marine fish) etc. . It was agreed that there will be more effort on getting experts to speak about fish an not soley focused on corals. With six BAR meetings a year or 4 speaking opportunities plus 3 at BAYMAC we should aim for lining up 7 high quality speakers each year. The Board asked for suggestion on future topics to the membership in attendance. One such suggestion from the floor was a speaker on anemones. Other suggestions should be directed to the VP.

National Sponsors

It was brought to the floor that several board member have been approached at events like BAYMAC and Reef-A-Palooza by national type sponsors (i.e. Seachem, Icecap, etc) to become sponsors of our club. President offered that this is a highly sensitive area for our club. We are approached regularly by prospective sponsors with whom we do NOT share our ideology. We must be aware that if we chose a company such as Marine Depot as a sponsor, who could well end up with a sponsor competing against our Local Fish Stores that are highly important to our local reefing community. In considering sponsorships, we don't want to promote unethical coral treatment or propagation methods such as could easily occur with many coral e-tailers. Companies like Bulk Reef Supply are in a gray area as to direct competition with our sponsors. There is also a dilemma regarding if we should have one or more in one specialty such as lighting. We agreed to compile a list of potential national sponsors and proceed cautiously. If we move forward we want to be clear to our members and visitors to our web site that just because we have a sponsor's banner on the web site doesn't mean they are the only game in town and our only choice for providing a particular service or product.

By-Laws

The President asked each of the BOD members to take a quick scan of the by-laws and determine if there were any needed updates. Changes in the current landscape (i.e. BAYMAC taking the place of the May BOD meeting and the addition of another regular meeting) may be in conflict. Clarity may also be needed on issues like the installation date of the new BOD etc.

You're welcome, Christina. I sure enjoy your passion for the hobby. Let me know when you will have time to visit and p/u some lovely mycedium! Lots of other very enthusiastic BOD members helped me to post a complete and accurate set of Minutes. I'm gonna like this job almost as much as my next interview with Tesla Motors! arty:

A possible suggestion is to have a "low risk" DBTC designation. Or maybe "delisted DBTC", like endangered species.
Basically, if there are a couple of generations, and a wide distribution of a certain coral, consider it "saved",
and emphasize that expectations are lower.

As a bonus, you could have a set of rules for hitting that, and a symbolic award for whoever started it.
Something to shoot for might revitialize the concept.

Until my new system is stable for quite a while, I would not take a DBTC, because the risks are a bit high,
but I would certainly take less critical ones.

I am the current president for the Wine Country Reefers in the North bay (Sonoma County) and I really like the BAR prop program, we are in the process of implementing the same thing but in a smaller scale. I also like the idea of DBTC program and have participate it in the past. I think reaching out to other clubs is a great idea and WCR would like to work with BAR to promote "responsible and sustainable reef keeping ideology" to our WCR members.

You are very welcome Tom. Many of the attendees of the meeting contributed to it's content. Thank you and your club members for embracing responsible ideals and ethics regarding reef keeping. It's pretty clear we are of the same mind in that regard. We are currently benefiting from detailed results from some of the most successful reef keepers and coral propagators in the hobby. The variety of coral that can be successfully kept and propagated has risen at a staggering rate even over the last few years. Thank you for helping to carry the flag and share some of our methods and ideas with your group.